...it is possible to reconstruct early Palestinian tradition and provide a way of thinking about this Jesus tradition as a useful means of understanding human society and historical change, rather than simply producing yet another Jesus portrait for the marketplace (though that will inevitably also be the case)...

All you have to do is answer these simple questions in the comments section by no later than Friday 6th March. The wittiest and/or smuggest answer will win.

Which contemporary (post-1945) scholarly Jesus (e.g. apocalyptic prophet, Cynic-like philosopher, wisdom teacher, Christian, all of them) would you send to the (metaphorical) gulag and why?

If you ruled historical Jesus studies, which Jesus, if any, would you impose on the rest of us and why?

Keep your answers relatively brief, just like Jesus-the-teacher-of-pithy-wisdom-sayings might have done. The winner will be judged by a specialist The Jesus Blog panel. Remember, if you overuse your razor-like wit, you may not win but you
will at least have the privilege of being in an online comments section (assuming you aren't censored, obviously).

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Today I find myself again researching French linguist, historian, and pseudo-scientist Ernest Renan. I'm a glutton for gluttons, it seems. This is not the first time I've made fun of the most influential anti-Semite in historical Jesus research and probably won't be the last. But today I was especially tickled by this statue in Tréguier Town Square.

At first I was offended that anyone thought it was a good idea to commemorate the man who forwarded the Khazar theory, leveraged phrenology to create hatred for Jews in Europe, and argued that Jesus became an Aryan. But upon second look, I thought that this statue might be the most fitting way to remember Renan. Not only is he slouched and tipping, his ignominious stature is juxtaposed with a most honorific lady of national pride. In fact, the more I look at this, the more I can't look away.

Monday, February 23, 2015

This May 22–23 , the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary's University, Twickenham, will host an international two-day conference involving scholars of early Christianity, classics, and human geography: "Cities of God?: An Interdisciplinary Assessment of Early Christian Engagement with the Ancient Urban Environment(s)."
The keynote address will be from Paul Trebilco, Professor of
New Testament Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand: "Engaging–or Not Engaging–the City:
Reading 1-2 Timothy and the Johannine Letters in the City of Ephesus"

Other presenters include:

Prof David Gill, University Campus Suffolk

Prof Eddie Adams, King’s College London

Prof David Horrell, University of Exeter

Dr Ian Paul, University of Nottingham

Dr Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer, University of Aberdeen

Dr Anders Runesson, McMaster University, Canada

Dr Anthony Le Donne, United Theological Seminary, Dayton, OH, USA

Prof Chris Keith, St Mary’s University

Prof Steve Walton, St Mary’s University and Tyndale House, Cambridge

Dr Matthew Sleeman, Oak Hill College, London

Prof Paul Cloke, University of Exeter

Dr Volker Rabens, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena

There are some places for offered 20-25 minute papers. If you wish to propose a paper, please send a title and 300-word abstract to Prof Steve Walton at steve.walton@stmarys.ac.uk by 1st March 2015. For more information and to register, visit: www.stmarys.ac.uk/social-scientific-biblical-studiescentre/

Registration is £65 (£40 students)

Food and accommodation:

Conference attendees are responsible for making their own arrangements for meals and accommodation. St Mary’s University has an excellent Refectory with reasonable prices for meals. There are also numerous local restaurants. There will be a conference meal on Friday night.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Jesus struck the ground with his hand and took up some of it and spread it out, and behold, he had gold in one of his hands and clay in the other. Then he said to his companions, "Which of them is sweeter to your hearts?" They said, "the gold." He said, "They are both alike to me."

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Some of the possible Aramaic influences on the Gospels have
a stronger explanatory force than others. Some are speculations and probably
should remain speculations. Here is one such speculation for εὐθυς in Mark which I can't decide if it's a serious possibility or little more than a parlour game.

The adverb εὐθυς
(‘immediately’, ‘at once’ etc.) occurs about 42 times in Mark which is a strikingly
high amount. This much is commonly stated. One possible explanation which is
very rare in scholarly literature (Pesch’s commentary on Mark is one exception,
I think) is based on an Aramaic (or ‘Semitic’) influence. In the Septuagint (Gen. 15.4; 24.45; 38.29), εὐθυς
can translate the Hebrew demonstrative particle, הנה(‘see!’,
‘behold!’, ‘lo!’, translation dependent upon how antiquated you feel), an Aramaic equivalent of which is הא. So one possible explanation for this εὐθυς saturation in Mark could be the
(mistaken? deliberate?) translation of this
exclamation, common of
course in Hebrew Bible/OT narratives.This
explanation could work with some passages in Mark (e.g. ‘And see! they
left their nets and followed him’, ‘See! The leprosy/skin disease left him’)

Then again, Mark might just have a particular εὐθυς fetish because, so the conventional
argument goes, he wanted to produce a fast-paced narrative. As I said, this is a speculative exercise. But still,
even the conventional explanation for εὐθυς
is not necessarily exclusive of the speculative approach here and it remains
that there is an unusually high level of εὐθυς
in Mark…

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

There are few people whom I respect more than Joel Lohr, Dean of Religious Life at University of the Pacific. If you find yourself near Elon University tomorrow (Feb 19, 2015), you'll want to know about this:

As debates continue to rage in America over same-sex marriage, abortion, gun control, evolution, immigration and stem-cell research, people of faith often look to their scriptures, particularly the Bible, for guidance. At times the Bible is wielded as a weapon to silence debate, to promote a cause, upheld as a moral standard for all, or is used as a source book for things like the golden rule or dictums like “love your neighbor as yourself.” But critics and people of faith alike are often found wondering how and why the Bible should be used, and whether there might be a definitive method in using the Bible in such debate. In short, who sets the rules? And why should any religious text—whether Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, or Sikh—be privileged in public debate? In this lecture, biblical scholar and religious dialogue expert Joel N. Lohr will map some of the territory before offering tentative guidelines for using sacred texts responsibly.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Today I was alerted to the latest JSNT. This volume features responses to Dale Martin by Paula Fredriksen and Gerald Downing. Dale offers a rejoinder. I will be reading these with great interest soon and very soon:

Discussing
the possibility of Aramaic sources can be highly complex, particularly attempts
at reconstruction of whole passages. In historical Jesus studies, the so-called
criterion of Aramaic influence is regularly dismissed. This is both right and
wrong. It is right in that none of the criteria take us back to the historical
Jesus but thus wrong in the sense that it is not necessarily worse than the
other criteria. But, like the other criteria, it might be possible to use Aramaic
to get back to earlier tradition. Of course, even Aramaisms may not even do
that—it is entirely possible, as critics rightly point out, that there could
have been Aramaic influence on Greek traditions. But then the criteria should
never have been used in a quasi-scientific sense anyway. So now, in addition to
the examples of דכו/זכו
and שבתא/שברא, I want to give another two examples where
I think there is evidence of pre-gospel Aramaic sources before giving some
suggestions about what else we might say about Aramaic and the Gospel tradition.

The
first is from the Lord’s Prayer (if that’s the right title) and the (genuinely
famous?) difference between Matt. 6.12//Luke 11.4:

And
forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matt.
6.12)

And
forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
(Luke 11.4)

In Aramaic ‘debt’ and ‘debtor’ (from חובא) is another
way of talking about ‘sin’ and ‘sinner’. Chilton noted some time ago that such
uses are common enough in the Isaiah Targum. Here debt/debtors can refer to
people punished by the Messiah, people destroyed by God, wicked gentiles,
enemies of Jerusalem, and so on. This is entirely consistent with all the
conventional words for ‘sinner’ in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, all of which
remained stable from the Hebrew Bible/OT through to rabbinic literature. The
language of debts/debtor is also found throughout the Syriac Peshitta (same
root) and used to translate all the standard uses of ‘sinner’ in the Hebrew
Bible. Obviously, we have to be careful using translations as late as the
Peshitta and the Isaiah Targum but lateness alone should not be used as a
reason or excuse to discount this possibility underlying Matt. 6.13 and Luke
11.4. For a start, the Aramaic root is certainly known by the first century (e.g.
11Q10 21.5; 34.4). But also, related traditions using the language of debt are found
in the Gospel tradition (in addition to Matt. 6.12//Luke 11.4, see Matt.
18.23-25; Luke 7.36-50; Luke 16.1-9).

Given the difference between Matt. 6.12//Luke 11.4, we
might suggest the possibility of an Aramaic source. This time, however, Luke
would not have gone for a significant change (as with ‘rue’ and ‘give alms’)
but for a more straightforward understanding of ‘sins’ which would be less
culturally specific than not including mention of ‘sins’ at all.

The second example is from Mark 2.27-28 and parallels:

Then he said to
them, ‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath;
so the son of man is lord even of the Sabbath’ (Mark 2.23-28)

For the Son of Man
is lord of the Sabbath’ (Matt. 12.8)

Then he said to
them, ‘The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath’ (Luke 6.5)

This might be the best possibility of the generic use (with reference
to the speaker/individual too) of the Aramaic idiom for ‘man’
(though the gendered term can be used more generally for ‘human’): (א)נש(א)
בר.
Throughout the Gospel tradition, the term seems to function as something like a
title (as is almost inevitable if the
term was translated from Aramaic to Greek with reference to Jesus). Aside from when
there are obvious allusions to Daniel 7.13 (e.g. Mark 13.26; 14.62), it is not
clear whether it is even possible to determine with any certainty that ‘son of
man’ sayings necessarily reflect an earlier Aramaic idiom. In various cases
they potentially could (e.g. Mark
2.10; Luke 9.58//Matt. 8.20), but in themselves they could equally have been a title which has come from Mark or whoever
else wrote such passages in Greek. The son of man problem across the Gospel
tradition is for another day but in the case of Mark 2.27-28 we do seem to have good evidence of an
Aramaic source where it appears to function as a form of parallelism indicating
its generic aspects (cf. Ps. 8.4). What’s more, the sentiment of justifying
Sabbath practice in terms of being made for humanity was something known in,
and associated with, Palestinian Judaism (e.g. Exod. 16.29; Jub. 2.17; Mek. Exod. 31.12-17; cf. b. Yoma
85b). But perhaps most significant is that both Matt. and Luke drop the generalising
Mark 2.27 (‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the
Sabbath’) and clearly make sure that we are dealing with a title for Jesus
alone: The Son of Man. The implication being, of course, that Mark has retained
a more literal understanding of an Aramaic idiom.

These are, then, two more of the better possibilities of Aramaic
sources underlying the Gospel tradition. I have noted that this remains limited
in its use for historical Jesus studies, at least in the sense that it does not
necessarily take us back to the words of Jesus. It is also of limited use for
the Synoptic Problem. If there were lots
of examples like Matt. 23. 26//Luke 11.41, Luke 11.42//Matt. 23.23 and Matt.
6.12//Luke 11.4 then we might be able to make a case for Q (an Aramaic Q or q’s
at that). But I’m not sure that there are enough examples of such parallels in
Matt. and Luke to do so (at least not to my knowledge) and so these one word or
phrase examples alone only point to isolated cases which is not, statistically
speaking, enough. Such examples might mean a qualification of a model of Luke
using Matt., or vice versa, in the limited sense that there might also have been
Aramaic sources alongside Mark and Luke or Matthew. One interesting possibility
is that such Aramaic sources might, in whatever form, account for Papias’ confusion
that canonical Matthew was originally written in the Hebrew (i.e. Aramaic)
language (as I tentatively argued with Mike Kok at SBL in 2013)

Using
such examples are limited. But pointing to the potential of earlier Palestinian
tradition and accounting for some problems in the Synoptic tradition is something, is it not?

Saturday, February 14, 2015

One of the longest standing cases for a possible underlying
Aramaic source in the Gospel tradition is based on Matt. 23.26//Luke 11.41 and
the saying concerning the purification of cups:

First clean the inside of the
cup, so that the outside also may become clean. (Matt. 23.26)

So give for alms those things
that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you’ (Luke 11.41)

The case, made ‘famous’ by Wellhausen and his inspired suggestion, typically claims that
Luke appears to have misread the Aramaic דכו (‘cleanse’, ‘purify’) for זכו (‘give alms’) and Matthew is therefore more
likely reflecting a pre-Gospel tradition (Black: ‘quite certainly to be found
in the wrong understanding of Aramaic dakko’;
Casey: ‘represents a misreading’, ‘misread for the original…’). An almost as
‘famous’ critique (not unreasonably) casts doubt on whether it would have been
possible to confuse (whether graphically, orally, aurally…) ד with ז.

Still, the two words remain quite similar, do they not? And I wonder whether this is such a
problematic issue if we stop thinking about whether Luke made a ‘mistake’
(an ‘honest mistake’?) or ‘misread’ and instead think in
conventional redaction critical terms of a more deliberate change (which is only hinted at by Black, though notably in
the context of whether ‘the two verbs were originally identical in orthography’).
For a start, there is a case to be made for Luke—or Luke’s imagined
audience—not understanding the laws surrounding the purification of cups and so
a deliberate change could help solve that particular problem. However, when we
look at the passage in its immediate literary context, the possibility of an
underlying Aramaic source becomes more of a possibility. In Luke
11.42//Matt.23.23, there is again evidence that Luke ‘misunderstood’ (possibly
deliberately and polemically) tithing laws in his claim that Pharisees tithe
‘rue’ and ‘all kinds of herbs’ which is precisely not the case according to the
Mishnah (m. Shebiit 9.1, ‘Rue, goosefoot, wild coriander, water
parsley, and eruca of the field are exempt from tithes…because produce of their
type is not cultivated [i.e. grows wild]’). What’s more, we have another
potential Aramaic ‘misreading’ here of שבתא(‘dill’;
Matt. 23.23) with שברא (‘rue’), a view made
‘famous’ by Nestle in an equally inspired suggestion from 1904. Whether or not Luke could have mistaken ת for ר is perhaps beside the point (Black:
‘misread [quoting Loew]…mistranslation’; Casey: ‘misread’) a redactor certainly
could have deliberately changed an
Aramaic source so.

And is it not striking that we have two close Aramaic equivalents behind the Lukan and Matthean
passages and would this not at least suggest the possibility of an Aramaic
source in this instance?

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

I am not qualified to weigh in on Paul Holloway’s recent
criticism of Tom Wright. Holloway is a Paul specialist as is Wright, and I am
not. Whatever professional disputes they have should be assessed by someone
else. I will simply take this opportunity to say what Wright has meant for me
as an American.

I have never been comfortable with America’s militant
hegemony. As a young adult this especially troubled me when it was yoked
with Christian exceptionalism. My angst hit a tipping point when I began my
university education in Canada. Canadians have a love/hate relationship with
America. They are acutely invested in American wellbeing but see clearly
(in my experience) our imperialist and fiscally amoral tendencies. In conversation
with theologians, seminarians, and intelligent lay-folks in Canada, I found
that my Christian identity and my American identity were at odds. I was a muddle
of contradiction: sometimes defending the America that I loved against hateful
comments (a Canadian roommate said to me on the morning of September 11th,
“What do I care? It’s not my country”); sometimes railing against America’s
sense of collective vengeance.

I discovered Tom Wright in my fourth year of living in
Canada.

Wright and John Dominic Crossan didn’t agree on much in
those days, but they had this in common: they both argued that following Jesus
and supporting a military hegemony are incompatible. Wright especially provided
me with a theological critique of empire at a timely moment in my moral
development. Say what you will about Wright’s notion of the “Kingdom of God” in
Mark (I agree with Helen Bond that we might have played this card too often in
Jesus studies). But his work allowed me to clarify some of my misgivings about
the unholy union of Christianity and imperial power.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

The Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts consultation is hosting an open session in Atlanta (Nov. 21-24, 2015). We invite students and scholars who are invested in Jewish and Christian wellbeing to submit abstracts on topics related to Jewish or Christian sacred texts.

Unit description: This unit explores issues related to the interpretation of sacred texts, with a view toward contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. It aims to foster biblical scholarship and pedagogy that is informed by and nurtures dialogue and to provide venues for discussion between the traditions on sacred scriptures.

This session is not themed, but all presentations must relate to contemporary Jewish-Christian relations. Some of our previous papers have dealt with our difference(s) in representations, teaching strategies, hermeneutics, and distinctive contexts of sacred texts.

Monday, February 9, 2015

On Facebook today I noticed a post from Bart Ehrman that linked to a blog post of his: "False Rumors (or lies?) About My Teaching." In that post, he responds to a reader's question. The reader has a friend of a friend of a friend of a sixth-cousin on her dad's side (something like this, you know how these things go) who knew someone in his class and reported the following about Bart walking into class the first day: "The first day of class he walked in and asked if there were any Christians in the room. He then told them that if they were still Christians by the end of the course that they are idiots and would probably fail."

I've never been in any of Bart's classes, but he spends the rest of the blog denying vehemently that he would ever have said such a thing and I believe him. I've been on the receiving end of this you're-trying-to-destroy-people's-faith charge numerous times myself. On the one hand, it becomes something that's easy to laugh off after you've heard it so many times and realize that, in reality, most of the people making the charge are just threatened and don't know how else to respond. On the other hand, and speaking for myself, it can be more than a little bothersome on the odd occasion. First, it's simply not true. Second, most (certainly not all) of the people who study the New Testament academically and at the level where they're scholars with college or university posts first got into this discussion for faith reasons. Whatever we think now (and there's a wide variety of thoughts in the guild), we only think it because of a path that started with sincere commitment to the text and a willingness to study it more in depth than almost anyone in our surrounding friends and family. Furthermore, almost all of us, regardless of any faith or non-faith position, believe that understanding these texts rightly is important and have dedicated our careers to it.

I thought I'd pass along an anecdote about Bart that relates to this. Several years ago I'd been invited to teach in an evening course at a church. After the session wrapped up, a guy I'd never met before and have never seen since came up to me and said, "Do you know who this guy is who teaches at North Carolina?" I said, "Do you mean Bart Ehrman?" and since I knew where this was going I didn't give him a chance to respond before saying, "Yeah, I know him. He was one of the editors who published my first book. He's been very helpful to me in my career." The guy was stunned and said, I kid you not, "Well I was going to tell you how much I hate him." I laughed and told him that, believe it or not, Bart was a really nice guy. Needless to say, this guy was really, really disappointed that I wasn't going to Bart-bash with him. He was even more disappointed to find out that, lo and behold, Bart doesn't actually have devil horns growing out of his head. Ok, the last part didn't happen, but the rest of the conversation really did.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Congratulations to Anders Runesson, who has been named the new Professor of New Testament at the University of Oslo. Anders is one of the top scholars in the world right now on ancient synagogues, but he has also published quite a bit of work in Gospels and Jesus studies, especially on the Gospel of Matthew. He is also clearly an excellent PhD supervisor and I'm sure his students and colleagues at McMaster University will be sad to see him go. There can be no doubt that their loss is Oslo's gain, however, and we extend our hearty congratulations to Anders!

You can catch Anders and many others in action in May at St Mary's University, Twickenham Cities of God? conference.
where he will be giving at lecture at our

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Stephen Fry gave an interview earlier this week where he was asked to say something to God. Fry is an atheist, which is probably the reason he got this question. Gay Byrne - the interviewer - looked shocked at Fry's answer. (Honestly, what did Byrne think he was going to get if not something provocative?) Fry's answer, as he prefaced, was something of a theodicy. In short, he places God on trial for the pain and suffering of humanity, especially those elements of nature that cause suffering (e.g. childhood blindness, bone cancer) that cannot be attributed to human action or inaction.

Today comedian Russell Brand answered Fry in this way. To his credit, Brand acknowledges what a cultural gift Fry is, both in his career and his activism. The entire reply has a tone of respectful disagreement--something that Brand does not always do well.

As someone who believes in God more often than I don't, I should probably applaud Russell Brand for making apologetics work in skinny jeans. This is something that C. S. Lewis could never pull off (although Lewis's bellybutton piercing should not be overlooked). But I find myself applauding Stephen Fry in this debate.

Both Fry and Brand begin from a posture of respect. This is no small gesture and I wish that more public figures could figure this out. Both have obviously given the question of theodicy some thought. They're not scholars. But they're not pretending to be. We could quibble with a few details. They both get the "woman caught in adultery" wrong. Overlooking these details, I much appreciate that they demonstrate an intention to bring substance to the conversation. Both demonstrate passion. Indeed they wouldn't be trending on social media without a bit of passion. But what Brand lacks that Fry demonstrates is a sense of empathy. Without empathy, this entire enterprise rings hollow. I don't mean to say that Brand is insincere. But his arguments with Fry don't quite speak to the *heart* of the problem.

Fry has his finger on a problem that haunts any witness of senseless agony. I'm talking about the sort of suffering that can't be measured by reason: the existential experience of chaos, that moment when the pain of another becomes ineffable. It's when theodicy sinks from the head to the gut that it really becomes a problem. Not the fact of it; the identity-altering experience of it. This is the element that doesn't translate to the lecture-hall-debate setting.

Brand's experience of the beauty, precision, and pulse of nature is essentially a religious experience. I'm in. I'm all in. But Fry's experience is equally compelling. It is an experience of nature that is as visceral as any religious experience. When one experiences theodicy at this level, I think that the appropriate reaction is agonizing disbelief. In fact I'm not sure that I can imagine a different response that demonstrates sanity quite as well. If a person can survive such darkness and muster empathy on the other side, I will forgive a bit of anger toward those who prop up a deity devoid of complexity.

Empathy is the key. In a debate setting, it is the ability to hear the basic, gut-level human experience in the testimony of the other side. It is to acknowledge that the experience of the perceived other is valid and illuminating. This is what Russell Brand is missing. This and a hairbrush.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

I pass along notice of an interesting conference coming up at Houston Baptist:

THE CHURCH AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY
2015 HBU THEOLOGY CONFERENCEAPRIL 16-18, 2015
The Department of Theology at Houston Baptist University is pleased tohost a conference on the development of the church in the early centuriesof Christianity. Our keynote speakers are
John Barclay (Durham University)Everett Ferguson (Abilene Christian University)Ben Witherington (Asbury Theological Seminary)Papers and Abstracts:
We are inviting papers representing a variety of approaches from scholars andgraduate students in this area of study. We are particularly interested in thedevelopment of early Christian communities within their wider theological andcultural contexts in the first two centuries. This includes theological reflections aboutecclesiology as well as social relationships with Second Temple Jewish practices andinstitutions, relationships within early Christian communities, and the relationship ofearly Christian communities with the wider Greco-Roman culture. Participants willhave 25-30 minutes to present papers (inclusive of Q&A). Please submit a 200-300word abstract to Dr. Ben C. Blackwell at bblackwell@hbu.edu by February 15,2015, with notification of acceptance expected by March 2. Registration by March23 is required for those who will present at the conference.
Registration: $40. Admission to the plenary lectures is free of charge.
hbu.edu/TheologyConference

...a weblog dedicated to historical Jesus research and New Testament studies

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Le Donne, Keith, Pitre, Crossley, Jacobi, Rodríguez

James Crossley (PhD, Nottingham) is Professor of Bible, Society, and Politics at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, London. In addition to most things historical Jesus, his interests typically concern Jewish law and the Gospels, the social history of biblical scholarship, and the reception of the Bible in contemporary politics and culture. He is co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Christine Jacobi studied protestant theology and art history in Berlin and Heidelberg. She is research associate at the chair of exegesis and theology of the New Testament and apocryphal writings. She completed her dissertation at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 2014. She is the author of Jesusüberlieferung bei Paulus? Analogien zwischen den echten Paulusbriefen und den synoptischen Evangelien (BZNW 213), Berlin: de Gruyter 2015. Christine Jacobi is a member of the „August-Boeckh-Antikezentrum“ and the „Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften“.

Chris Keith (PhD, Edinburgh) is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.

Anthony Le Donne (PhD, Durham) is Associate Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary. He is the author/editor of seven books. He is the co-founder of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts Consultation and the co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Brant Pitre (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Among other works, he is the author of Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Mohr-Siebeck/Baker Academic, 2005), and Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015). He is particularly interested in the relationship between Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian origins.

Rafael Rodríguez (PhD, Sheffield) is Professor of New Testament at Johnson University. He has published a number of books and essays on social memory theory, oral tradition, the Jesus tradition, and the historical Jesus, as well as on Paul and Pauline tradition. He also serves as co-chair of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

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Jesus and the Last Supper

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Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text